


Win a date with Bruce Wayne!

by thedevilchicken



Category: Batgirl (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Competition-Set Fic, Dating, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Time, Identity Porn, Sex Pollen, trapped together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 19:10:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10747989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: When Steph entered the competition, she really, really, 100%, cross her heart and hope to die,reallydid not expect to win.





	Win a date with Bruce Wayne!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amathela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amathela/gifts).



When Steph entered the competition, she really, really, 100%, cross her heart and hope to die, _really_ did not expect to win. 

Everyone in her class was doing it so she did, too, just for kicks - all it needed was a name and a phone number and a date of birth just to check the entrant was really aged eighteen or over, plus one lousy dollar per entry. Steph paid her solitary buck for one solitary entry and put her name in on her usual PC in the campus lab, feeling pretty good about herself since it was for a pretty solid good cause and the amusement factor was high, but she was thinking all the while that there was no way she'd ever win, not in a bazillion years. There were way too many people entering for that to ever happen, _way_ too many, chipping in ten bucks apiece, twenty bucks, a hundred bucks, 'cause a) who didn't want to raise money for orphans? and b) who didn't want to win a date with Bruce Wayne? Who wouldn't want to win a series of _five_ dates with Bruce Wayne? 

To be brutally honest, though: Steph didn't. Sure, it was a pretty entertaining idea, or at least it was on the surface of it, when all you thought about was Bruce Wayne's reputation for having a really, _really_ good time, about the cars and the parties and that whole billionaire jetset lifestyle he played up to the max. And hey, maybe it was even fun to daydream about how he'd react, if he'd have to force himself to be charming and play along with the whole weird thing like they'd never met and what had happened definitely hadn't happened, or maybe they'd smile for the inevitable cameras while talking shop at the dining table. Because while sure, before what happened happened he hadn't quite all-out accepted the new Batgirl, somehow he'd at least managed to stomach working with her a couple of times since he'd gotten back. But the idea of really going on some sort of competition-winning date (five of them, even!) with Bruce - _actual_ Bruce, not Bruce Wayne - kinda made her cringe. 

Still, she figured she wouldn't win, because even if she did, Bruce would just perform some minor feat of computer wizardry or get Barbara to do it for him instead (Steph figured Babs would go along with it even if she wasn't Bruce's biggest fan sometimes) and someone else's name would appear under _winner_ as if by magic. But then, she went right ahead and won. 

She groaned when she got the call and she asked them to call her back, tried to make out she was just too overwhelmed to talk but really she was trying to conjure up a reason, any reason, dog ate her homework, mono, alien abduction, to get out of it. She thought maybe she could give her win to a girl from her class or just flat-out give it up and they could go ahead and redraw a new prizewinner, someone who'd actually wanted to win at all, but by the time the organizers called her back, she'd changed her mind again. She gave them her address and they told her Mr. Wayne would come by at seven o'clock the next evening. She told herself she was doing the right thing. She told herself stuff would get fixed between them if she forced the issue. She told herself it wouldn't be a complete and total disaster. At least, she really hoped it wouldn't. 

"Well, that's certainly unexpected," her mom said when she told her, but she was on her way out to a night shift at the hospital so that was that. She thought about calling Barbara as she microwaved leftovers for dinner that exploded all over the inside and she wiped it all down with a frustrated sigh. She thought about calling Barbara as she sat down at her computer to start on her homework with her lukewarm, detonated casserole, but she eventually decided against it, hovering over her phone. She knew what Barbara would say, or she was at least pretty sure about it. She wondered about it all night while she was out on patrol, if she was doing the right thing or being kinda dumb about it, and came to the conclusion - swinging between buildings on the end of a wire, narrowly missing a fire escape because duh, where was her concentration? - that she'd done dumber things in her life. Like narrowly missing a fire escape, for instance.

She wore a little black dress and heels that she could barely walk in because that was what everyone at school said people wore to dinner with rich guys, though it all felt a little bit like she was a little kid playing dress-up on Halloween. The car pulled up to her building at 7pm just like they'd told her it would and she watched Bruce get out of it. She watched him straighten his tie, watched him smooth down his suit jacket and then walk right up to her door. He was really there. Oh God, they were really doing this, what the heck had she been thinking? He rang the doorbell. Steph quietly despaired.

"Ms. Brown," he said, when she gathered herself and went down to answer it, with a smile that somehow didn't even look the least bit forced. She locked the door behind her and slipped the keys into her purse and she flashed him a smile she hoped looked even half as natural as his did. 

"You can call me Stephanie, you know," she said. "Or Steph. Most people go for Steph. I guess maybe it sounds less like I'm a six-year-old who just squeezed toothpaste on the cat or something like that. _Oh Stephanie, what did you do!_ "

"I think I'll stick with Stephanie for now," he replied, looking amused but somehow making it sound like a sophisticated, grown-up name in a way she'd never really known was possible, and he offered her his hand. "I don't have a cat. And you can call me Bruce." She took his hand; he brought hers up and kissed the back of it, suave-like, and Steph laughed out loud in surprise before she could even start to help it. Bruce chuckled, like he didn't quite get what a joke this was, like he didn't understand at all, like they really were just meeting for the very first time. Then he offered her his arm and she took it. He led her to the car that was waiting at the curb. 

The restaurant wasn't the ritziest place she'd ever been, but it was the ritziest place she'd ever eaten and not just dashed through chasing various and sundry bad guys. There were too many forks on the table and all the guys were wearing suits with jackets and ties like that was a normal thing that normal people did when they had dinner on a weeknight. 

"Why don't you order for both of us?" she said when the waiter arrived, the fricking sommelier hot on his heels, and so Bruce ordered, in French, because of course he did, the damn fancypants show-off, and the guys didn't even ask her for ID. Perks of being Bruce Wayne's date for the evening, she guessed, even if she was over twenty-one. Anyway, the novelty showing her ID that actually had her name on it and not some stupid made-up alias still hadn't worn off.

So they sipped wine and they ate pâté like normal people really did fricking pâté, some kind of duck thing next that tasted like nothing else on Earth, and and then there was a chocolate soufflé and coffee and Bruce was...nice, the whole time, there was no other word for it. She'd met him as Bruce Wayne before, of course, but this seemed different, mostly because he wasn't being kind of a dick like he usually was. He was _nice_. He smiled. He made her smile. He complimented her dress and even sounded like he meant it even though she guessed he'd probably seen better. He talked to her about how college was going for her and what she might want to major in and movies she liked and didn't mention how he'd dated the star of one of them, even though she knew he had because she'd seen them together. They talked about Gotham and how they'd both lived there all their lives, more or less, give or take, and how nothing ever really changed except sometimes for the worse, and some of that was crappy but some of it was great, like the opera house that looked like something out of a gothic nightmare and how the funfair still came to town every summer, right on schedule. If he hadn't've been a forty-something billionaire, if he hadn't've been fricking Batman in disguise, she might've been tempted to say they had a lot in common. Wow, that was weird.

And then, when they were finished, he paid the bill before she even had a chance to marvel at the price of it. The prices hadn't been on the menu, so it had to be expensive, but frankly she would've been happy eating hotdogs from a cart on a bench in the park. In the end, she was basically just left thankful she hadn't gotten duck sauce all down the front of her dress, but then again this Bruce might just've laughed it off. Maybe she'd've laughed. It was creeping her out and _nothing_ was getting fixed but somehow she had to remind herself to care about that.

"Do you want to grab a drink with me?" he asked, as they went out to the car, past the fussing maître d'. "I know a couple of places. The night's still young." 

Steph grinned. "The night looks pretty middle-aged when you have class at 9am tomorrow," she replied, and he shrugged to concede the point like maybe he really thought that was a pity and then there was the car, pulling up to meet them. The driver - not Alfred, she noticed, which seemed kinda weird - swung by her place and Bruce opened the door for her and she fell off her damn heels like she'd been worried about doing all night since she'd put them on and he caught her, because of course he did, of _course_ he did. He swung her back up to her feet and she pushed back her hair and tried to look amused instead of faintly embarrassed, but Bruce just held onto her hand a couple of seconds longer than he really needed to, looked at her from way too close by for a couple of seconds longer than he needed to, before he smiled and stepped back again.

"So, what do you want to do tomorrow?" he asked. 

"How about the fair?" she said. "You can try to win me a stuffed toy at one of those crooked games." 

"That could take some time and a lot of cash," he replied, with a smile. "I'll let my bank know I might be needing to set up an overdraft." 

Steph chuckled. "Is that why they keep coming back every year?" she said. "Bruce, have you _ever_ won a prize at the fair?"

He laughed, like he meant it, and then he walked her to the door and he said good night. She watched him leave. And, oh God, as she closed the door behind her, as she locked it, stood back against it, she was more mixed up inside than ever. She'd enjoyed it. She'd _enjoyed_ it. She wished right then that she knew just how much of Bruce's enjoyment had been an act; she suspected it was something right up by 99%.

But hey, at least he hadn't run away screaming. That was a start. Maybe she could fix things after all.

\---

So, the next night, after classes were over, they went to the fair.

Bruce won her a slightly creepy-looking teddy bear roughly the size of a person at the duck shoot game stall thing, whatever they were called, and Steph stood by and watched him aim. If she hadn't known what to look for, she'd've maybe just thought he was pretty good; she knew what to look for, though, and she knew he was pulling left just a fraction right before he pulled the trigger. Anyone else, she'd've assumed it was a flaw in their technique that they just hadn't noticed or hadn't bothered to correct, but Bruce's technique wasn't flawed. He was doing it on purpose. It almost seemed strange to spot that little trace of Batman under the shiny Bruce Wayne veneer, but she guessed she hadn't really thought it'd be any different. Not really. It wasn't like Batman ever really went away, even if being around him like that could've almost been enough to make her forget.

He played the game four times to win the prize. By the last time, she was pretty sure he'd already memorized the pattern the fake ducks all moved in so he could've beat it with his eyes closed if she told him when to start, but he just grinned and said something about a summer he'd spent overseas, clay pigeon shooting in Hertfordshire. She told him she didn't know exactly what clay pigeon shooting was, or where exactly she'd find Hertfordshire, but it sounded like a rich guy thing; he laughed and told her he guessed it was, but at least she knew he had the skills to save them both if a flock of murderous mechanical ducks ever descended on Gotham. Steph honestly wouldn't've been surprised if they had, given everything she'd seen happen in the city over the years, but she didn't think it'd be Bruce Wayne with a fairground rifle doing the saving.

They wandered around the place after that, between the stalls and the rides, weaving in and out of crowds. THey ate cotton candy and took a stroll through the house of mirrors and pretended like either of them were fooled by it at all and they hadn't been through mazes ten times worse, made by people ten times more devious, and it was weird, seeing the two of them in the mirrors all stretched out or squished down, Bruce and Steph and not Batman and Batgirl. Then they rode the ferris wheel and spent forty minutes stuck right up at the top of it while a mechanic came to poke at the electrics down below. Honestly, it wasn't even all that bad, watching the sun set over the port, even as the air got chillier. She'd been worse places. She'd even been worse places with Bruce, when she thought about it.

"Y'know, I bet we could climb down," Steph said, standing up the way she knew she wasn't meant to and leaning out against the nearest support bar so she could peer over the edge and down to the ground. It wasn't that far, really - she totally thought they could've climbed down, though she guessed it would've been a bit of a scandal, Bruce Wayne shimmying down a ferris wheel in his khakis and a fancy polo shirt with a competition-winner on a date she'd got as a prize. She wiped her greasy hands on her thighs and got oil stains on her jeans as she sat back down, and Bruce just looked at her, amused, but weirdly not in the mean way Brucie sometimes was.

"I think we'd better stay where we are," Bruce replied. "They'll work something out, even if they have to call the fire department."

"You don't strike me as a fraidycat, Bruce," Steph told him, with a wiggle of her brows.

He smiled, just a fraction too wide for it to qualify as coy, the corners of his eyes too crinkled for it to look fake. "I'm not," he said. "Maybe I don't want to tear my pants. Maybe I don't want to wind up in unflattering photos all over Facebook. Maybe I'm just enjoying your company."

Steph felt herself blush and pretty much hated that she did, considering, and then a chilly evening breeze blew by off of the water nearby, tousling her hair, getting all around her bare neck. She shivered and Bruce wrapped one big, warm arm around her shoulders in response, and then she _really_ blushed. She hadn't asked for it, but there it was. She really hadn't expected it, considering.

It was weird. It was _really_ weird. It was all those 'So, did he flirt?' conversations with girls at school earlier that day, 'I bet he flirted', 'I wouldn't say no, I bet you wouldn't say no', 'did he take you home or did he _take you home_?'. She totally hadn't been thinking about what she would've done if Bruce really had flirted with her and not just acted all nice and charming over dinner, the way she guessed maybe the competition organizers had told him he ought to, or maybe that was just Alfred's influence. She still totally wasn't thinking about it then, either. She wasn't thinking about his arm around her shoulders and his hand on her arm and her thigh pressed against his how big he was sitting there next to her, tall and all bulky with muscle and oh God, he smelled good. She wasn't thinking about what might've happened the night before if she hadn't said no to drinks and had him take her straight home from the restaurant like she was some kind of model student. She wished she'd worn a jacket, or a scarf at least, but she'd figured it was the middle of summer and man, she hadn't expected Bruce to touch her like that. She hadn't expect him to touch her at all. She told herself to stop being a jackass about it and made herself relax and she absolutely didn't lean into him at all. Not at all. Nuh-uh, not for a second. And anyway, it was _Bruce Wayne_ she was with, and not, y'know, _Bruce_.

They sat there for forty minutes, their feet up on the edge of the car, Bruce in his pricey suede loafers and Steph in her beat-up old sneakers that looked like she'd run the whole Gotham marathon in them, twice, maybe three times, all in quick succession. They watched the sun set and the stars come out and they talked, about Bruce this time 'cause Steph didn't feel like opening up to him about her private life all that much anymore when it wasn't just a cover like his seemed to be, about how he usually spent his evenings (out on the town), about what he did for his business (basically nothing, but he had a great office anyway), about his car collection and if the fair had come to town when he was young. Steph knew she was pushing it, considering, but he said yes, he'd been a couple of times with his mom and dad, he'd been a couple of times with Alfred but it really wasn't the same, and then after Dick had come along, fairs and carnivals and circuses and all those things had seemed like a kinda no-go area for obvious reasons. It felt real. It felt a lot like the truth.

His fingers toyed with the ends of her hair as he smiled a sort of wistful, sort of rueful smile and looked away. She put her hand on his knee, like maybe that was comforting or maybe she meant it in another way. For a second it was really almost like they were actual normal people, but then the ferris wheel started to move again and the moment was definitely over. She might've even said the moment was lost.

He lent her his jacket when they got back down to the ground though its shoulders were so broad she could've borrowed a couple of poles from the fishing game stall and pitched it in the fairground like a tent. Then they grabbed a hotdog at a stand, ate them sitting at a picnic table under an awning with one of those weird outdoor heaters on, and she told herself maybe that was what made her cheeks feel warm. It wasn't the subtle smell of Bruce's aftershave on his jacket round her shoulders, or watching him try to avoid dripping mustard on his shirt. It wasn't the fact that it was the easiest, most natural she'd had with anyone in months, even though it was pretty much a lie.

He walked her to her door when the night was over, just like he had the night before, but when he turned to leave she called him back for his jacket. 

"By the way, what do you want to do tomorrow?" he asked, his hand brushing hers as she handed him the jacket, and he folded it over his arm. 

"Can you get tickets for the opera?" she asked. 

"The company has a box."

She tilted her head, not quite teasing. "So, I'll take that as a yes, then?"

He flashed a smile in response. "You can take that as a yes," he said. "I'll see you around seven."

He left after that and Steph went inside. Her mom was out and she thought maybe that was a good thing because she needed to get back out of there; she changed out of her grease-stained jeans and into her suit, figuring a night out as Batgirl would help her clear her head.

As she flew through the air, as she rode her bike, as she punched a mugger right in his stupid face, she told herself she knew what she was doing. 

As she flew through the air, as she rode her bike, as she kicked a gun-toting drug dealer right in his stupid crotch, she didn't see Bruce. For the first time in months, she thought maybe that was a good thing.

\---

It turned out Steph didn't actually own more than one good evening dress, so the one she'd worn to the restaurant had to do for the opera, too. 

Honestly, it wasn't even like she really enjoyed opera. She didn't mind it sometimes, she guessed, and some of the music was pretty great, but the high notes kinda felt like they buzzed around in her head and they were always in languages she didn't understand much of except to order food and okay, so she thought the live versions would probably be a whole lot better 'cause she could maybe get the gist from action on the stage, but it seemed a whole lot easier to just go pick up a DVD and watch a movie or something. Of course, she couldn't really tell Bruce Wayne what she wanted to do was pick up a DVD and a make a bowl of popcorn and watch romcoms on the couch. Or she guessed she could've, but she'd've felt a bit of a jackass doing it. Heck, maybe Bruce had a secret love affair with date movies, who knew.

The car pulled up at 7pm and Steph was already, stupidly, there by the door when Bruce rang the bell. 

"You look great," he told her, inside the car, once the driver (who still wasn't Alfred, and that still weirded Steph out) had shut the door behind them. 

"It's the same dress I wore to dinner two nights ago," she admitted, smoothing it over her hips almost self-consciously. "It was that or I wrap myself up in a sheet and pretend it's a toga."

"You look great," he said again, reiterating like he meant it. She smiled. So did he. And she almost believed he really did mean it, except that wasn't really Bruce's style; he'd always kinda sucked where compliments were concerned, at least the genuine ones. 

The opera was pretty good, she guessed. The people there were super-fancy, the kind Bruce Wayne must've rubbed elbows with all the time, fancy enough he probably would've remembered their names even if he didn't moonlight as Gotham's premier crime-solving costumed vigilante, and when they got to the company box, there was champagne and two glasses sitting there all ready and waiting. Bruce wore a tuxedo and sure, so it wasn't like Steph had never seen a tux before, but hey, she'd never seen Bruce in one before, not up close and personal like a foot away in a box at the opera usually reserved for company business deals and she wondered idly who he'd had to toss out of the booking to get it for himself. He looked fantastic. Then again, he always kinda had looked fantastic, so it shouldn't've been news that he'd come back from the dead looking the same way he always had, no worse for wear. 

The opera itself was pretty good, too - _Die Zauberflöte_ was a heck of a lot more fun than the overblown tragedy of the Wagner thing she'd seen there before, even if they were both full of German she didn't really understand much of for the warbling, and she totally didn't even glance at Bruce more than once or twice while there were singers still on stage. Then, after, as the house lights came up and everyone was filing out, she leaned forward and she peered over the edge of the box down to the stalls below. 

"You like heights?" Bruce asked, just then polishing off his third glass of champagne. Steph guessed he could've handled a whole lot more and still been perfectly sober, all that bat-training and all, and it was kinda weird that he was meant to be in character as Bruce Wayne but she still hadn't seen him go to any extremes at all. 

"Sure," she said. "I know a lot of people hate heights but I guess I kind of like looking down. I'd rather see the fall coming than it catch me by surprise, y'know?"

Bruce leaned forward on the edge of the box right next to her, on the polished wooden rail. "I know what you mean," he said, giving her a quick sideways look. "You want to go somewhere higher? There's a great view from the terrace outside my office." 

She said yes. She had no clue why she did but she said yes and they left the theater and they walked there because it wasn't far and she'd learned her lesson two nights before so she hadn't worn the heels. Bruce seemed even taller in flats but not scary tall, kind of reassuringly tall or just reassuringly real because okay, so she'd faked her death, and it wasn't like Bruce had disappeared to get back at her, but she'd felt kinda weird knowing the world was still turning without Bruce Wayne in it. Of course, Tim had turned out to be right (a fact that did nothing for his ego, she thought) and Bruce was alive. Even with what had happened four months earlier, maybe six or seven after Bruce had taken back the cowl, it was good to know he was around. Gotham felt safe somehow. _She_ felt safer.

The guards on the front desk waved the two of them by - Steph got the feeling this wasn't the first time the boss had swung by with a lady on his arm, though it was definitely the first time that lady was Stephanie Brown. They took the elevator up and up and up to Bruce's floor and he took her down the hall into his office, strolling past a few later workers, and okay, so, it turned out he was right, the view was pretty great from the terrace-balcony kind of thing outside. When he passed her a glass of whisky in a crystal glass and they stood together against the balcony's stone railing looking down from it at the street below, it could almost've been romantic, except there were the telltale marks of a grappling hook on the stonework, a smudged mark from a rubber boot sole on the lip of the wall, everything she needed to remind her exactly who it was that she was with. None of it was real. Not one tiny bit of it. 

"How do you like the view?" Bruce asked. 

She lifted her glass, took a sip and spluttered - okay, so it turned out maybe a good single malt wasn't exactly her drink - and she waved him off when he moved to...well, help, she guessed, though what exactly he could've done but pat her awkwardly on the back and ask her if she'd like a glass of water was a bit of a mystery. Sometimes there were situations even Batman couldn't save a girl from, after all.

"The view's great," she said, when she'd regained her composure, and when she knocked the glass off of the balcony wall, Bruce leaned over and he caught it in a flash. He surely had to wonder if she'd done it deliberately but man, he didn't break character even for a second, he just handed it back and she said, "Oops, butterfingers!" like she did that kind of thing all the time, clumsy old her, and she hadn't been trained by Batman. He chuckled. He leaned back against the wall, and she leaned there with him, listening to the hum of the traffic below. 

"You're not scared of heights?" she asked. 

"I'm scared of a lot of things," he replied, and took a sip from his glass. 

"So why come out here?"

He shrugged, cradling his glass in both his hands. "Sometimes facing your fears is a good way to remind you you're alive," he said. 

"Is that why the newspapers say you get so many speeding tickets?"

He turned his head to look at her, shrugged again, smiled. "Sometimes it's just fun to drive fast," he replied. "Have you ever driven a fast car? I mean a _really_ fast car."

"Maybe once or twice, sure." 

"Then you know exactly what I mean." 

She had to admit she kinda did. The Batmobile was a heck of a rush. 

They had another drink, just one, a small one, standing on the balcony side by side. It seemed a pretty long way down to the street below, not the highest Steph had ever jumped from on the end of a line (heck, it wasn't even the highest she'd jumped from _without_ a line), but it was still pretty high, high enough that the breeze caught her hair and the people looked kinda tiny. She'd've liked to've hopped up onto the wall and done a little tightrope walking, seen if Bruce Wayne would've pseudo-freaked or if he'd've laughed or maybe joined her, crazy as it sounded. She was pretty sure that if she'd fallen, he'd've caught her just like he'd caught the glass the glass she'd dropped just to see if he'd catch it. And after that, when Steph started getting goosebumps from the chilly summer's night air, they went inside and left their glasses sitting there on the edge of Bruce's pristine glass desk that looked kinda like it'd never seen a day's work in its life and they went back to the elevators. They stepped inside. Bruce hit the button for the first floor; a couple of floors down, the elevator came to a sudden, juddering, grinding halt. Of course it did. It had all been going far too well.

Steph thought maybe they could've pried the doors open or popped the emergency access hatch and gotten out of it that way - she'd climbed more than one elevator shaft in her time so she was pretty sure Bruce must've, too. But they waited a couple of minutes instead, looking at each other like _so, what do we do?_ and when it became apparent that the elevator wasn't about to spring back into life again anytime soon, Steph pressed the contact button and asked the guys at the security desk to send some help. Then they stood back to wait.

They were only in there for maybe twenty minutes more while a technician came out to jolt the elevator back into semi-normal operation, but by then Steph was giving serious thought to escape, little black dress or not. It turned out it was one thing to be trapped with Bruce on a ferris wheel in the open air and totally another to be trapped in an elevator with him, under crappy white light that washed out his face and made him look almost kinda unreal, like Bruce Wayne was a disguise he could slip on just as easily as the batsuit. When he talked, his voice was too cheerful and it was too loud in the small, confined space and kinda sharpened by the metal elevator walls and it just _wasn't Bruce_. It was Bruce Wayne, but then kinda not Bruce Wayne either, or maybe this was how Bruce Wayne treated the women he dated until they weren't dating anymore, but either way, it was really, _really_ confusing. Maybe it was just the fact that he kept up the act while they were alone together that did it, who knew. 

Bruce leaned back against one of the elevator's metal walls and he untied his bowtie as he talked, telling her about the view from the roof of the manor and how she was welcome to come over sometime to see, or maybe she'd like to skydive sometime, the next time he did it, whenever that might be. And Steph leaned there opposite him, her hands tucked in behind the small of her back, agreeing, _sure, that'd be great, sometime_ , when all she wanted to do was frown at him and ask him what the hell was wrong with him, jeez, wasn't he even human? Didn't he have feelings? Wasn't there anything he wanted to say to her, or talk to her about? Didn't he want to clear the air? But she guessed he must've just been a way better actor than she was because she couldn't see a hint of any of that. There were no cracks in the shiny Bruce Wayne veneer, even under the elevator's bright white lights. 

Then Bruce paused. He looked at her, smiling faintly as he frowned. 

"Have you heard anything I've said for the last five minutes?" he asked. "You look like you're a million miles away."

"I guess I was thinking about something else," she replied, right on the edge of sheepish. 

"You were staring."

"I was?" she asked.

Bruce nodded. "You were," he confirmed, solemnly. 

"At you?"

"At me. Do I have something in my teeth?"

Steph smiled almost tiredly. She shook her head. "No, you've got nothing in your teeth," she said. "Your teeth are fine. Your teeth are perfect."

"Then I'm boring you with all this talk of bungee jumps and paragliding?" His smile broadened in apparent amusement. "I can't remember the last time anyone accused me of being boring."

Steph gave him her best skeptical _o rly?_ look. "Did I call you boring?" she asked. 

"So I'm interesting?"

She snorted. Attractively, she thought. "I think that's what they call putting words in someone's mouth, Bruce," she said. 

Bruce stood up a little straighter. He stopped leaning on the wall. "So I'm _not_ interesting to you?" he asked. 

"Now I didn't say that, either."

"So, do I bore you?"

"You don't bore me." 

He took a step forward. 

"So, do I interest you?"

"Sure, you interest me." 

He stepped forward again. 

"So, are you interested _in_ me?"

Steph raised her brows. He was closer then, almost too close, almost stiflingly close. Her pulse picked up. She was confused again, maybe even more than she'd been before because this was _not_ the way she'd meant for this to go. 

"Are you flirting with me?" she said. 

And maybe Bruce was about to answer but then the elevator shuddered and juddered and groaned and it started to move and all Steph could think was it was absolutely in no way too soon. They stepped out into the lobby and after a quick _we're fine, no really_ with the guards who were still there on duty, Steph and Bruce made their way outside, over to the car. They settled themselves inside and the driver pulled away from Wayne Tower and they talked, chatted, just like nothing had happened at all inside the elevator, like nothing had been going to happen because she was pretty sure there was no way what she'd thought was happening could've been happening. All she knew was it was the single weirdest Friday night she'd had in a long time, and that was really saying something. 

When they got back to her place he walked her to the door, just like he'd done the night before and the night before that. 

"What do you want to do tomorrow?" he asked her, standing at the doorstep. 

She thought it through. She'd been thinking it through since the balcony, on and off, in the moments where she hadn't been contemplating a rather gymnastic escape route or wondering if she'd just hopped over the border to the Twilight Zone. 

"I'd like to drive your car," she said. 

Bruce grinned. "I can work with that," he said.

\---

The next day, Bruce and the driver picked her up around 10:30am and Steph had to admit she hadn't realized 10:30am even existed in Bruce Wayne's world of social events and inevitable hangovers. She was impressed that he arrived on time. He'd been on time every day so far; maybe she shouldn't've found that idea as unsettling as she did.

He took her out to the Gotham motor club and walked her over to the track from the parking lot outside, signed her in as his guest and they wandered down the surprisingly well-maintained pit lane side by side. Maybe Gotham didn't have a whole lot in the way of NASCAR or IndyCar or whatever over motorsport but that didn't mean they didn't like to put on the occasional race or track day or whatever it was called. And it turned out, surprise surprise, that Bruce Wayne had a track membership. He seemed to belong to so many clubs and groups and societies and all that stuff that Steph kind of imagined his wallet like one of those fold-out trick ones from a cheesy comedy, enough cards in it to trail all the way back to the parking lot.

He took her over to a locked garage and when he keyed in the code and pulled open the doors, there were two cars there waiting inside. 

"You want the Ferrari or the Lamborghini?" he asked her. 

She laughed. "Do I have to choose?" she replied, but she took the Ferrari and said she'd give the Lamborghini a try after that; he said that sounded like the only sensible plan of action as far as he was concerned.

When she belted into the driver's side of the Ferrari she didn't say supercars weren't exactly what she'd had in mind when she'd said she'd like to drive his car, but then again it wasn't like Bruce Wayne actually had access to the Batmobile, and it wasn't like she'd never driven it before anyway, not that either of them really needed reminding of that particular night. But it was pretty weird that pulling a bright red Ferrari out onto a racetrack was more of a novelty to her than Batman's car, all pretty Italian design, leather upholstery, pedals and a gearshift that felt like they were made for her. She took a leisurely circuit of the track the first lap out, mapped the corners, the curbs, where the asphalt rose and where it fell away. Then she put her foot on the gas and she went for it and Bruce was right there with her in the flashy Lamborghini, darting around in her rearview mirror. Steph had never been a terrible driver but she was pretty sure Bruce was pulling his punches back there; Bruce Wayne was meant to be a pretty good driver when he wasn't speeding or taking out fences down narrow country lanes someplace between the city and Wayne Manor, but not a _great_ one.

They had lunch in the garage, which was pretty weird but Bruce produced a picnic basket from the car where the driver was waiting over a fantasy novel as thick as Steph's fist and they talked sitting on cushions on a blanket spread out on the garage floor, about the cars, which of them it was that she preferred now that she'd drive both, which he preferred and why, relative merits of the Ferrari LaFerrari and the Lamborghini Huracán, whether maybe the Enzo or the Aventador had been better in terms of performance, like Steph was in the kind of position where she'd ever get to drive those kinds of cars again. At least not legally. Bruce Wayne's life was really, _really_ weird. 

Of course, Bruce Wayne being Bruce Wayne, he'd forgotten dessert completely, so they bypassed the Bentley and the driver and jumped into his Lamborghini and they headed back into town to grab gelato. She knew a good place not far from her school so she recommended it and gave directions once they hit the Gotham traffic; it didn't seem like Bruce took a whole lot of his model or actress or ballerina girlfriends out for ice cream, after all, and he seemed happy enough to go along with it. He'd seemed happy enough all day, the night before, every time they'd met since the whole _win a date_ thing had started. 

She treated him to a cup of gelato, paid for it herself at the counter and brought it back out to him where he was waiting outside, ogled by random passersby. He let his hand brush hers. She had to remind herself not to frown. She had to remind herself that all of this was just an act, and she was getting nowhere fast with fixing things between the two of them; after all, she still hadn't seen Batman in months.

They strolled across the street, into the park. She guessed the number of people around made sense for a Saturday afternoon in summer, feeding ducks, playing frisbee, students reading books though the semester would be over soon. They took a seat on a bench by the pond under the shade of a huge old tree, Bruce sitting way too close though Steph didn't move away, so close the knee of his chinos brushing her bare thigh by the hem of her shorts. The thing about being close to Bruce was she knew she shouldn't like it but she kinda always had anyway, like it'd mean something if he approved of her and not just that she was hungry for approval. 

"I used to come here in the summer," Bruce said, glancing away over the water. "With my parents. I remember feeding the ducks." 

"Me, too," Steph replied, frowning just slightly to herself over her nearly finished gelato. "I remember my dad bringing me here, once or twice." And she reached over, like an idiot, and she squeezed Bruce's hand with hers. He set his gelato cup aside. He brushed her hair back from her face with gelato-cold fingers and it made her shiver and that made her laugh out loud in surprise just as much as the fact that he'd even done it. Maybe it bothered her that she'd been letting herself get taken in by this weird kind of pseudo-Bruce, but she guessed at least it couldn't be any worse than the way they'd been for the past few months.

"What do you want to do tomorrow?" Bruce asked, while they were still sitting on the bench this time instead of standing on Steph's doorstep. 

Steph shrugged. "I don't know," she said, because she honestly didn't have a clue. She could've said bungee jumping or abseiling or maybe they'd go find a mountain to climb or whatever dumb stuff it was that Bruce Wayne liked to do in his spare time, but she'd had her fill of extraordinary for at least the next three years. "Maybe just coffee?"

Bruce nodded. "I think we can manage that," he said, like he was intrigued by the change of pace. "I know a place. I'll come by around eleven." And she agreed and that was that, the plan was in place for their fifth and final prizewinning date. 

And then, when they'd finished up their cups of pistachio walking out of the park, a couple of guys in ski masks jumped out of a van and tried to hustle them into the back of it. When Bruce let them, Steph just followed his lead. She figured he had a plan. Bruce always had a plan, not that getting away would've been a really big deal 'cause the way they tied her hands, Steph could've slipped out of it and popped the van door in maybe four seconds flat. She'd've bet Bruce could've done it in three. So she kept her cool though the floor panels dug into her bare shins and the cuffs they'd put around her wrists weren't exactly built for comfort. Still, hey, it _still_ wasn't the worst place she'd ever been with Bruce.

They were tossed out of the van into a warehouse twenty minutes later and then marched down into a basement by the same guys in ski masks as Steph counted steps, mapped turns, scanned their landmarks. The guys marched them down the stairs and flung the two of them inside and slammed the door with a melodramatic clang like that was meant to be intimidating; Steph rearranged herself to sit on a sack of what seemed to be some kind of corn, her hands still cuffed behind her back. This was ridiculous. And okay, so everything since she'd won the competition had been pretty much ridiculous, but this was taking it to a whole new level. 

"So, have you been kidnapped before?" she asked, casually, at little exasperatedly, just like conversation over dinner or over cotton candy, over drinks at the opera or a cup of gelato in the park, like this was all just another normal place to be on a sunny summer afternoon.

Bruce shrugged, apparently just as casual about the situation. "A couple of times," he replied. "It usually works out in the end." And the fact that he was still in character while they'd been kidnapped by semi-organized, probably-professional kidnappers with guns and tasers and who the heck knew what else that they hadn't tried to use yet was the end of it for Steph. She was done. It was _the end_. They'd gotten nowhere with the reason she'd even gone on that first date in the first place, and now they were being held prisoner. So much for winning a date with Bruce Wayne.

"Do you think Batman might come save us?" she asked, giving him a marginally irritated look that would've been out of place on most victims of kidnapping at that point. 

"I guess you never know," he replied. "He might be tied up."

"But someone'll come?"

"Yeah, they usually do."

She tilted her head. "What if someone's already here?" she asked.

Bruce frowned. "I'm not sure I follow." 

"I'll tell you a secret," she said, and she leaned forward. She shimmied closer. She pulled her hands from the cuffs behind her back with a magician's flourish. "What can I say, Bruce. I'm Batgirl."

"I thought you looked familiar," Bruce replied, with a quirk of his brows, and he paused a second to look at her, like the pros and cons of a decision were running through his head. She could almost see the second when his mind was finally made up. "You want to know a secret, too?"

"Sure," Steph said. "Why not."

He leaned in, right up by her ear, brushing her hair back from her neck with the back of his fingers grazing her skin - apparently he'd gone ahead and slipped his restraints, too. One hand went to the back of her neck, his fingertips straying lightly over the nape of it, and the faint stubble of his jaw rasped against her cheek. Oh God, he was so close. It made her shiver almost more than if he'd just gone ahead and kissed her. She hated that it did. 

"I'm Batman," Bruce said then, the tone of his voice and his breath on her neck making her shiver again like a total jackass. And when he pulled back again, after, it was like a switch had been flipped because, God, oh God, he _was_ Batman, all pretences finally fallen away. She could tell even if he wasn't wearing the suit because he might as well have been.

"Let's go," he said, and she followed his lead, trying not to think about how they'd both just broken character completely for the first time since the start. And an hour later the kidnappers were cuffed and in custody and Bruce and Steph were giving statements downtown at the Gotham PD HQ. It wasn't the first time Steph had seen the inside of an interview room but they were pretty nice to her, all things considered, even if the coffee tasted kinda like hot, milky dirt. They didn't ask about her bruised knuckles or the tear in her sleeve. She didn't exactly volunteer to explain, either.

When they left the station, they didn't leave together. Bruce looked at her as she left through the front doors from where he was standing by the station's front desk and for a second she looked back at him; he had that look on his face again like he'd had the morning after what had happened: hard, a chilly stone wall of Bruce beneath the shiny veneer of Bruce Wayne, like he'd gone ahead and shut himself off again the way he always did when things got out of his control. She gave him one last little rueful smile and a shake of her head and she walked away. She could make her own way home. Screw the Lamborghini.

She guessed now she knew what the point of the competition had been, at least: Bruce had been hunting kidnappers. He'd used her, maybe because he knew she was capable, maybe just because no one else had been free. She guessed that made sense. 

After all, she'd never been his first choice. And she guessed, walking home, leaving him behind, that there'd never been any way of fixing this.

\---

The night it'd happened, Steph had been out on patrol. She was barely even used to the new outfit by then, let alone the new name that went with it, but it had all been starting to grow on her like a kind of bat-shaped fungus. If nothing else she liked how Batgirl got a whole lot more respect - and a whole lot more attention, it had to be said - than Spoiler ever had, even if it was the same girl behind the mask. Of course, not too many people out there really knew that little fact. 

She'd been tracking small-time illegal arms dealers for a couple of weeks by then, picking up the weapons after the fact and hoping they'd lead her to a bigger fish; she'd struck out totally that night, though, both leads she'd had on her list to chase down before dawn came round coming up with a big fat zero. She interrupted a mugging and felt a tiny bit better about herself when she left the guy tied to a convenient nearby fire escape for the cops to pick up and she was just heading into an alley to take a quick wire-aided trip up to the roof of the next apartment building for just one last scout around before hometime when her in-cowl comms sputtered into life. Barbara had a habit of catching her right in the middle of something and scaring her half to death along with it, but fortunately her grip on the grappling gun as she whizzed up to the roof was pretty strong. 

"We've got a problem," Oracle said, in that tone of voice that said she was completely serious. 

"Is that something urgent or do you want me to guess?" Steph asked, as she stepped onto the roof with a crunch of rooftop gravel underneath her feet. "I suck at guesswork, Oracle. We could be here all night, or what's left of it."

She heard Barbara take a deep breath. "It's Batman," she said. 

"...go on..."

"There's been a slight...accident." Barbara paused. "Look, the truth is I wouldn't ask you to go but you're the only one in the area who can get there in time." 

Steph frowned under her cowl. "He needs help?"

"You could say he needs help." 

"What's the problem?"

Oracle sighed, the sound loud in Steph's cowl. "Ivy," she said. 

"Did I miss something? I thought Arkham had her locked up tight."

"They do. She is. But Batman seems to have triggered one of her security devices at an old warehouse hideout, working on an unrelated case." 

"Soooo..." Steph said. "What's the problem, exactly?"

"Ivy likes to call it sex pollen."

If Barbara had been anywhere within visual range - maybe she was, who knew what she'd got pulled up on her screens in terms of cameras right then - Steph was sure she'd've appreciated the comical double take. 

" _Sex pollen_?" She frowned harder. "Oracle, are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"Yes, I am." 

"And it's what, _fatal_ otherwise?" 

"Yes," Barbara confirmed. Steph groaned. "Batgirl?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

"He'd tell you you don't have to do this." 

"Not to speak ill of the recently not-dead, but he's kind of a self-righteous dick sometimes," Steph replied. But frankly, she was already on her way back down off of the damn building by then. Barbara being Barbara, she had to know that, too.

"He's going to be...different," Barbara said as Steph moved. Steph could hear her tapping at her keyboard as she sent her the coordinates. "Get him back to the cave and do _not_ let him leave. Do whatever you have to."

After, Steph remembered thinking she didn't like the sound of that at all. She remembered thinking she might need to take one for the team because Tim was who the hell knew where doing something that was probably Very Important and Very Hush-Hush and Dick was in Europe, Jason was an unreliable son of a gun at the best of the times so who could say, and Cass was somewhere Steph wasn't even sure she could pronounce, let alone point out on a map. There was no time to run down any of Bruce's extended contacts, even if they'd thought he would've been comfortable with that, not that she thought he'd be comfortable with any of it. The sinking feeling in her gut told her she really was the only one who could help. So, she went to help. She got there as fast as she could, even if she was pretty sure there were places she'd've rather been. 

When she made it to the warehouse, the bad guys were long gone and there was Bruce, cuffed to a drainpipe sitting on the ground in the alleyway outside. He'd _cuffed himself to a pipe_ rather than try to get himself back to the cave under his own steam and Steph frowned under her cowl at that 'cause it really couldn't mean anything good if Bruce didn't trust himself. Bruce had always been so steady. He didn't look steady.

"Are they all gone?" she asked, and Bruce nodded tightly, not even glancing in her direction. 

"You shouldn't be here," he told her. 

She went closer and dropped into a crouch. "Oracle sent me to...take care of you," she said.

"She shouldn't have done that."

"And yet here I am anyway," she said. "Believe it or not, I don't want you to die. We've already been there once. I'm not going through that crap again."

She leaned over him to pick the lock on the handcuffs - actual handcuffs, not a zip tie or a pair of batcuffs from the design Steph was pretty sure Bruce had built a secret quick release into without telling anyone else how to find, but actual police-issue handcuffs though exactly where he'd picked them up from Steph didn't ask. And Bruce flinched as she leaned by him. He actually _flinched_ , and that was the most disconcerting part so far 'cause Bruce didn't flinch. Bruce was completely locked down. Bruce was in control. Except he wasn't, not then. Oh God, it was so clear that he wasn't if you knew where to look.

He balled his hands into fists and he squeezed his eyes shut as she helped him move; she popped the passenger side door on the Batmobile and she pushed him in, swept up his cape and closed the door behind him. She got herself into the driver's side though apparently the car didn't come with an instruction manual and she couldn't get the seat to shift forward, which she was pretty sure was just typical for Batgirl on a rescue mission. She wound up shoving a box behind her back and sitting right up on the edge of the seat to drive, which was weird but effective, 'cause judging from the way Bruce's gloved fingers were digging into his thighs, they needed to get him home sooner rather than later. She'd never seen him that way. She'd never seen him _close_ to that way.

It felt like there was a stone in her gut all the way back to the manor and down into the cave. Neither one of them said a word and Barbara kept mercifully quiet on the matter and Steph glanced at Bruce occasionally as the city whipped by and then the countryside and then they were there, back home, or at least back at Bruce's home. Barbara had told her a few things on her way to find Bruce. This was a bad idea, but it was the only idea. Of all the things she'd thought she'd be doing that night, Bruce hadn't been one of them.

"Look, are we going to do this?" Steph asked, when she'd managed to coax him out of the car when they'd got inside the cave. He pulled down his cowl and he winced, then he looked at her, and she'd've sworn she'd never seen him look like that before, not once, not ever. He looked disoriented and most of the way off-balance, half angry like he could've put his fist through the nearest wall that wasn't made of solid stone, and frustrated, on edge, all the things she absolutely did _not_ associate with Bruce. Bruce was together, even if he was a raging mess underneath it, really deep down. She figured you kind of had to be to dress up like a bat and go swinging between buildings like Tarzan.

"You don't have to do this," he replied, almost shaking. 

"We don't do this and you die."

He winced again. "Well, yes."

"Then we're doing this," she said, because it seemed simple at the time, it really did. 

It seemed simple and she was so irritated that he didn't see that and she pulled off her cowl and her cape and started pulling off her suit and Bruce just stared at her like he'd never seen a woman undress before. To be fair, he'd never seen _her_ undress before, at least not the whole way and definitely not right in the middle of the cave in front of his desk and in front of the fricking batcomputer. And when she was done, when she was standing there naked like that was a thing they did and not really, really, intrinsically weird, she marched right over to him and started unclasping pieces of his suit, too. Heck, she figured if he wasn't going to do it himself then she might as well do it for him.

"Anyone would think you'd never seen a naked woman," she muttered, pulling his cape away, and Bruce took a sharp breath, not quite angry, maybe something else. Fricking Ivy and her dumb potions, of course it was her. All she could think was at least she was worried enough about him and angry enough about the whole damn thing that she didn't really care that she was naked.

"You don't have to do this," Bruce said again, and his voice was a whole lot unsteadier that time. Time wasn't helping. Time definitely wasn't on their side.

Steph sighed hugely. "We've already covered this," she said. "I'm the only one available. Catwoman's in Thailand. Wonder Woman's on Themyscira. Even Batwoman's out of town and I really don't think you want me to try to find her. I'm pretty sure the only people who might be able to get here in time are Supergirl and the Flash - you want me to give them a call and find out or do you want to get this over with?"

Bruce seemed to actually consider that for a second as he looked at her, which didn't exactly fill her with confidence or the motivation to continue, but hey, that was Bruce all over, stubborn, dickish martyr that he'd always been. Then he really _looked_ at her. His face was flushed and his eyes were a fraction too wide and he really _looked_ at her, and she was still pretty relieved she was too irritated with him to really care that he was looking at her standing there naked in front of him. Then he pulled off his cowl. He pulled off his armor, his boots, his undershirt. He pulled off the entire suit in a couple of minutes, not quite taking his time but not quite not, like he was trying to convince himself the whole time that there was another solution if he could only find it, like the fact they hadn't managed to synthesize a cure the last time meant nothing and he didn't care that none of his subsequent tests had turned anything up, either. Barbara had said they'd tried. They'd tried for _months_. They weren't sciencing their way out of this, no matter how much Bruce might've wanted to. 

He stripped himself naked piece by piece and he tossed the pieces of his suit aside, which felt kinda weird because she was pretty sure she'd never seen him be so haphazard with the Batsuit. She tried not to look at him, not the way he was looking at her, at least, that awkward, resentful, ravenous way - she tried not to notice the lean stretch of muscle in his arms and his chest and his abdomen, the scars, so fricking many scars she had no idea what had caused most of them and she wasn't about to ask because maybe in his current state he would've told her. Then he moved toward her like he hated himself for doing it and wasn't sure if he hated her for letting him.

He kissed her. He crushed their mouths together and he kissed her and she hadn't expected that, she'd expected it to be kind of quick and rough, like maybe he'd bend her over the counter and five minutes later it'd be done and they could move on from there, maybe even pretend like nothing had happened at all. But Bruce kissed her, his hands cupping her jaw and running into her hair, moving over her, her back, the back of one hand tracing the curve of her breast, and goddammit she got caught up in it, one hand at the back of his neck, fingers playing at the low edge of his hairline, and he walked her back till the back of her thighs hit the edge of the desk. She shuffled up onto it and the next thing she knew, Bruce had dropped onto his knees and Bruce's mouth was between her thighs, thumbs parting her lips, tongue on her clit, his breath and his mouth and his hands all so hot she could barely stand it. And he was good at it, because of course he was good at it, and she shivered and slid her fingers into his sweat-damp hair and oh God, he was _really_ good at it, so much she didn't really care that the edge of the desk was kinda pointy. She let her eyes close. She let her muscles tense. If she didn't think too hard, she could almost pretend that it wasn't even Bruce. She had to ask herself if that was the sensible solution.

But then he stood. He came closer still. He came close enough that the tip of his erection brushed against her thigh and she felt his hands on her skin, felt his fingers dip down between her legs and he adjusted himself, shifted, teased the line where her lips met between her thighs with the tip of his cock then he was in her in a second, pushed in deep, and she wrapped her legs tight around his waist. He was in her and she held on tight to the edge of the desk and the back of Bruce's neck and she gasped a breath, feeling him, really _feeling_ him inside her, the length of him, the girth, the way he couldn't've gotten even one single fraction deeper into her if he'd tried with his not inconsiderable might. Then he picked her up almost like she was nothing and he pushed her back against the nearest wall and it was cold and she shivered hard and held on around his massive shoulders as he started to move his hips, as he started to move in her. She hadn't expected it to feel good, somehow, but her head dropped back against the wall. She'd expected it to be quick and clinical and perfunctory and anything but this, like they were both halfway on fire. But then he pulled back again. He pulled out, shuddering, jabbing his nails into his palms.

"Upstairs," he said, and they went upstairs, up into the manor, up the staircase, Steph wondering in horror the whole time if Alfred was going to pop out of a doorway and find them hurrying down a hallway naked but she realized in a horrible moment of clarity that chances were Alfred already knew what was happening and he was deliberately keeping himself out of their way. Barbara knew and Alfred knew and who knew who else they might tell and Steph flushed hot and followed Bruce through the house, trying not to think too hard about who might end up knowing as he pushed her up against the back of the front door and pushed back inside her just for a couple of thrusts, as he bent her over the table where he left his keys and pushed in again from behind with his hands at her hips, as he had her again against the end pole of the handrail at the bottom of the stairs. By the time they got upstairs, she'd managed to persuade herself not to think about it, maybe not to think at all, and he led her through the totally over-the-top double doors into the bedroom. _His_ bedroom. Wow, Ivy's pollen had really done a number on his judgement. She didn't have a whole lot like it to explain away her lack thereof.

He pushed her down on the mattress with her hands pinned up above her head and he pushed back into her, hard, still up on his knees. She watched him as she shifted under him, the way his muscles flexed, the way he could barely even look at her as he pushed in and pulled out and pushed in again, over and over, and he rubbed at her clit with one thumb, almost too hard to be pleasant but it was, oh God, she was so turned on by how he touched her, strong and sure and like he already knew every part of her. She came around him, pulling so tight around him over and over that it almost hurt and he groaned out loud, sounding like Bruce but not like Bruce because Bruce couldn't sound like that, desperate and needy and right on the edge of his steady, constant self-control. The look on his face as it happened was this weird mix of really, really turned on and completely, totally appalled, but he kept on going, probably because he couldn't not.

The first time he came, he sounded as turned on as she'd ever heard anyone sound in her entire life. The second time, he sounded raw. The third, he sounded almost wounded, and Steph was pretty sure her back was about to give out by then. He stumbled away from the bed after that, spent forty minutes in the bathroom throwing up stuff that looked as pink as pepto-bismol and all Steph could really do was put on a robe that probably cost as much as her college tuition and sit on the side of the bathtub with a sort of concerned look on her face that did neither of them any good at all. When he was done, he leaned back against the side of the tub next to her calf and she passed him a damp washcloth to wipe his mouth. He wiped his mouth and he dropped his head into his hands. He rubbed his face. When he took his next deep breath, it went in in a desperate sort of shudder. When she squeezed his shoulder, he flinched. 

She could see he was already hard again, _again_ , and she stood, she held out her hands and he took them and she helped him up and she dropped the robe down to the floor. She leaned over the bathroom counter in front of the basin and he stepped up behind her and damn, _damn_ , she hadn't counted on the mirror, how she wound up watching him in it as he entered into her again, as the length of his cock pushed in and opened her up again, as his hands cupped her breasts, as he pinched her nipples and made her push back against him with the feel of it. She caught his gaze and he looked at her looking at him, basically stricken as he fucked her, the expression like nothing she'd ever seen on his face before, the snap of his hips faltering just for a fraction of a second. He came in her again, just like that, groaning out loud with it like he couldn't stop himself even though he wanted to, and he dropped his head down against her shoulder after. 

She pushed him back, she turned, she slipped her arms around him. Somehow, she knew he was taking it all at least twenty times worse than she was. She guessed she knew why: she'd never professed to be completely in control. Having it taken away from him, she could see exactly what it meant, so she pulled him back into the bedroom and back down onto the bed. She pulled the sheets up over them both. Maybe they were done and maybe they weren't but wow, they both needed some rest. Maybe they were even exhausted enough that they could get it.

In the haze around dawn, she woke with Bruce's hands on her skin. She woke with Bruce's hand between her thighs, teasing at her lips, teasing up between them, and his mouth pressed to her shoulder. When he shifted up on top of her, he seemed different. When he had her, slow and hot and deep, the desperation seemed to have ebbed away, and she drifted off again with her fingertips tracing the lines of his scars. But, in the morning, she woke as he was leaving. He had that look on his face, hard, closed-off, like maybe he'd've rather died than do what they'd done, except that sounded like the plot of some dumb soap opera and not like real life. But all she could do was take a shower and borrow some clothes from Cass's room 'cause they sure as heck fit her a lot better than Bruce's did. 

She wasn't sure what she expected after that, really, but radio silence wasn't it. Okay, so it wasn't like Bruce ever got particularly chatty, and okay, so it wasn't like she'd expected him to say anything that could've made the whole thing seem any less screwed up, and jeez, it wasn't like she was expecting him to call her up and ask her out on a date or anything like that, but it wasn't like everything even went back to normal, like it'd been before. 

Bruce avoided her. Usually, they'd crossed paths once or twice every couple or three weeks, maybe not close enough to talk but close enough to acknowledge each other's presence, but by that afternoon, kidnapped and self-rescued and leaving that precinct, she hadn't seen Batman since that night. She hadn't see him even though she knew Bruce was in Gotham - all the gossip rags in the campus store said so. Still, she guessed at least neither Barbara nor Alfred had tried to talk to her about her feelings or whatever and no one else had called her up to ask her what it was like to screw Batman, so maybe they hadn't told after all. She guessed she hadn't really expected them to, when it came down to it.

Of course, none of that had made it any better. After all that time, Bruce still made approximately zero sense to her; all she'd been able to do was try to act like nothing had happened. That was, until the competition.

\---

She left the precinct without him, feeling like things between them were even less fixed than they'd ever been. She went straight home and she changed and twenty minutes later, Batgirl was out on the rooftops and Stephanie Brown was nowhere to be found; at least, Steph tried very hard to pretend that was true. 

Somewhere around midnight she saw Bruce on a nearby rooftop and chances were he saw her, too, chances were he'd put himself there on purpose since he'd been avoiding even being in her line of sight for months, except he didn't even acknowledge her before he was on his way again. She had no clue what kind of game he was playing because whatever, he'd gotten his kidnappers just the way he wanted. So she cursed under her breath, muttered as she made her way down a fire escape to street level to continue her current investigation, as much as she didn't feel all that much like it. 

"You know I can hear you, right?" Barbara said, inside Steph's cowl. 

Steph muttered something disparaging. She definitely knew Barbara could hear her.

"Careful," Barbara told her, before she went back off comms. "You know we've all had a crush on Batman at some point. It never ends well." And Steph scowled because she didn't have a crush on Batman, or Bruce - if anything she had a crush on _Bruce Wayne_ and that was a totally different thing. Especially since Bruce Wayne didn't really exist. 

The night wore on and the night finally ended and Steph went to bed, tossed and turned feeling irritable and stupid and definitely not thinking about Bruce at all except for the part where she did. It wasn't even so much that he'd pulled her into his plan without her knowledge (it wasn't the first time and it probably wouldn't be the last, after all), it was the conversations, the casual touches, the smell of his aftershave on a borrowed jacket. She hated that she'd fallen for it. She hated that she'd thought she could fix anything with that stubborn jackass Bruce Wayne. 

She showered in the morning, wondering what she'd tell the people at school about the dating thing gone wrong. It'd be all over all of the crappy city newspapers, _Billionaire Bruce Wayne Kidnapped!_ and they'd want to know how it felt if she'd been scared, how it'd happened and if Bruce was heroic, and she had no idea what she was going to say, just like she'd had no idea what to say about the other dates. Everyone had assumed _stuck in an elevator_ was code for something else, anyway, and that frustrated her enough she screwed up her work and had to start from scratch. She wasn't screwing Bruce Wayne. The one she'd screwed was someone else, the one that no one really knew about.

She showered and she cooked some eggs and picked at the plate in front of her laptop, contemplating her homework assignment from Assistant Professor Gordon, but contemplating was all it really got. Then she pulled on a pair of yoga pants and her favorite beat-up sneakers and took a walk down to the store for milk. She figured it'd get her out of the house, at least. But there on her doorstep when she got back home was Bruce, ringing the doorbell. She checked the watch at her wrist; it was 11am. She'd assumed the date was cancelled. Apparently he hadn't.

 

She tried turning around and walking away but a minute later he caught up to her at the corner. He caught her arm and she turned to him. She frowned at him. She had no fricking idea what to make of the look on his face. 

"Look, Bruce, I really need to get home," she said. 

He nodded, like he agreed, but then he frowned and finally let go of her arm.

"Then you're going the wrong way," he pointed out. 

She shrugged. "So sue me," she said, and started back to the house, and Bruce kept pace along with her. She unlocked the door. She went inside and she glanced back, and she frowned at him.

"Are you coming in?" she said, and didn't wait for an answer. She went inside and she left the door for him and she was already putting on a fresh pot of coffee by the time she heard the door click shut. He sat down at the kitchen table and she poured two cups, put one down in front of him and took a seat just opposite. She guessed maybe the last date would be coffee after all, just not quite the way that she'd imagined. 

"I'm sorry," he said, with the cup in his hands. 

"For what?" she replied. "For the fake competition or for the real kidnapping?"

"Neither," he said. The son of a bitch actually looked like he meant it.

"Then what for?" she asked.

He looked at her, levelly, over the top of the kitchen table. He took a sip of his coffee and scowled at the heat of it. 

"For what I did that night," he said. And okay, so that was a surprise, it was a bit left-field, but Steph just went with it and rolled her eyes. 

"If you're going to apologize about that, Bruce, apologize for being a dick to me when we were done," she said. "I've spent four months trying to convince myself you don't hate me or something for trying to help but no, turns out you've just been beating yourself up like always."

"I don't hate you," Bruce said. "You saved my life. You didn't have to." 

She smiled sarcastically. "Sure I didn't," she said. "Because I really could've lived with knowing there was something I could've done and didn't." 

"We both know it was more than just _something_."

She shrugged. She really, _really_ didn't want to talk about it. And he sat there, looking at her, his hands around the cup then on the table then resting on his thighs like he didn't quite know what to do with them and that was the least Bruce Wayne thing she'd seen him do in days, except maybe for breaking out of a locked room in a warehouse surrounded by armed kidnappers, but who knew, maybe Bruce Wayne did that kind of thing all the time and she just didn't get to hear about it all that often. Then he calmed. He visibly calmed, and stilled, and pulled himself straighter. She hated that she admired that ability in him.

"What do you want to do tomorrow?" he asked, over the coffee, over the tabletop, not a trace of Bruce Wayne on his face or in his voice or in the way he held himself. And she frowned because she knew the five days and five dates were over and anyway, he'd caught the kidnappers that he'd set all that stupidity up to catch. She was about to point that out when she realized exactly who she was talking to. He knew. He had to know. And then she got it. 

Somehow, suddenly, it all made sense. She'd really never expected Bruce to apologize. She'd never expected him to try to make what had happened any easier. She'd definitely never expected him to ask her on a date. And okay so it'd turned out the competition really hadn't been a coincidence and it really hadn't been Barbara or Dick or Damian or any of the other people she'd kinda half suspected set her up with it once they'd found out her name was in the running. Okay, so it had been Bruce. All of this had been his idea, the kidnapping, _her_ , but he could've done it differently. There were so many other ways he could've gotten the same outcome. Maybe she hadn't managed to fix anything between them, but it looked like this might be Bruce trying, too. Maybe everything they'd talked about was actually true. 

Bruce had _dated_ her to try to set things right; maybe the kidnappers had just been the best excuse to do it. This time, he didn't try to make excuses. God, the idea of it was tantalizing. It tied her stomach up in knots.

She stood. She walked around the table and Bruce sat there watching as she did it. She ran a hand over his hair, down the nape of his neck. She leaned down and, her pulse racing, she brushed her mouth against his. He didn't flinch, not even slightly.

"How about dinner at your place?" she said. "You can help me out with this case I've been working on. Stubborn guy. Likes to think he's always right." She raised her brows significantly. "He isn't."

Bruce nodded, taking the rebuke right on the chin for once. 

"We can do that," he said. And Steph guessed that was a start. 

Maybe she'd never know the real Bruce, but she was absolutely willing to try. At least she knew he'd catch her if she fell. And she'd be there to catch him, too.


End file.
